Every week, the expressions of love and support pour into Whitesburg, Kentucky’s Mountain Community Radio, WMMT, like messages in a bottle from friends and family to inmates incarcerated in the seven state or federal prisons within the reach of the station’s signal.
On a recent episode of the show “Calls from Home,” a woman told her man: “You know I got you. I couldn’t ask for a better husband.” Another caller said: “I love you with all my heart, forever and a day. Have amazing dreams. Good night. I love you.”
If the local Republican congressman, U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers, has his way, the federal government will construct another prison, this one near Roxana, a tiny Letcher County community 7.5 miles west of Whitesburg, potentially atop what’s left of a mountain after dynamite removed its top and coal was carried away.
As “Calls From Home” suggests, the prison business is booming in the mountains of Central Appalachia. The growth has occurred alongside the decline of the coal industry, with at least five prisons built atop old coal mines, said Judah Schept, a professor in the School of Justice Studies at Eastern Kentucky University, based in Richmond.
Schept is author of “Coal, Cages, Crisis: The Rise of the Prison Economy in Central Appalachia,” a 2022 book that examines how prisons became economic development strategies for rural Appalachian communities.
In all, there are 16 federal or state prisons in a Central Appalachian area that includes eastern Kentucky, and parts of neighboring West Virginia, Virginia and Tennessee. Eastern Kentucky has eight of those, Schept said.
“Half of those eight are federal prisons, which is really unusual,” he said.
Three of the four have been built since 1992, with the backing of Rogers, who has represented eastern Kentucky for 42 years.
Rogers has been working to get a federal prison in Letcher County for nearly 20 years, already securing more than $500 million in federal funds. But, this is a prison that some in Rogers’ own party haven’t wanted; the Trump administration said it wasn’t needed, and in 2019, the Federal Bureau of Prisons withdrew its plans for a high-security penitentiary and prison camp on the former surface mine in Roxana, one with a potential inmate population of 1,400.
Then, last year, the Bureau of Prisons resurrected the proposal when it filed a notice to conduct a new environmental impact assessment. Rogers quickly praised the agency, saying at the time that “with more than 300 jobs on the line, it’s a battle worth fighting in a region where jobs are desperately needed.”
In July, opponents, including members of the group Concerned Letcher Countians, were furious to find out about language inserted by Rogers in an appropriation bill by the House Appropriations’ Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies, which Rogers chairs. It seeks to fast track the project in a way that would prevent further public comment or environmental review, and protect construction and operation of the prison from judicial review.
“The planning and work to build a federal prison in Letcher County has continued over the span of nearly 17 years,” Rogers said in a written statement. “During that time, every possible study has been conducted in Roxana, along with an abundance of public comments and thorough reviews from every angle. It only makes sense to reuse the studies, comments and reviews that have already been conducted, when possible, to save taxpayer dollars.”
The debate over the proposed new prison comes in the aftermath of devastating flooding in the area in the summer of 2022. Across eastern Kentucky, the flooding was worse than ever, contributing to at least 44 deaths when up to 16 inches of rain fell from July 26 to 29, 2022, sometimes as heavily as 4 inches per hour. The result was widespread devastation, including in Letcher County.
With the prison fight fully engaged, Inside Climate News spoke with Schept, who has been studying Central Appalachian prison issues for more than a decade. He said he has come to the conclusion that neither the federal government nor eastern Kentucky needs more prisons.
The interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Your book mentions that most new prisons are being built in rural communities, but that Central Appalachia stands out. In your book, you refer to the term,…
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